Academic Rigor in the Middle School 
by Michael Callan, Middle School Principal

“It takes a special person to teach middle school” I remember my professor saying to my cohort of teacher education candidates. I paid very little heed to this though because after all, I was going to teach high school. It was only through a series of fortunate events that I found myself in a middle school classroom. It was then that I realized that it does take special skills to teach 11-14 year olds, frankly because they are an exceptionally special age group.

At no other time is there such developmental diversity within an age group. Nikki Krug and I were both 12 years old when we danced endlessly to Meatloaf; me staring at her necklace and her losing all feeling in her blood-filled hands that were placed on my shoulders on a downward 45 degree angle. In addition to the obvious differences in rates of physical development, there is also a wide spectrum covering levels of maturity, confidence and cognitive readiness amongst our middle schoolers. Recognizing the uniqueness of this age group, the first school specifically designed to meet their needs (a middle school) opened its doors in 1950. Since then, there has been an incredible boom in the number of schools that simultaneously focus on the cognitive, social, physical, emotional and moral growth of young adolescents.

ISKL’s middle school is certainly a nurturing environment. The relationships with teachers and among peers are strong. The ‘smile factor’ is extremely high and kids, teachers and staff love to come to school each day. This is the face that so many visitors see and comment on. What may not be obvious is the foundation that lies beneath: the incredible amount and quality of academic rigor that students and their teachers are engaged in every day. Does this jovial, friendly, supportive atmosphere then mask or detract from the academic rigor of our school? On the contrary, there is an enormous body of evidence that connects motivational and comfort levels of students to engagement and success in rigorous learning. This just makes sense. We tend to do our best, hard work when we are motivated and supported.

Defining academic rigor is an important first step. In the past, the level of academic rigor in schools was measured by the amount of homework or the number of tests and exams that their students were given. Systems such as these were not designed to meet the cognitive, social, physical, emotional and moral growth of children. They were designed to cull students, in a sense to separate the wheat from the chaff sending a very small percentage onto higher education and the majority into the work force. The measures of academic rigor compared one student to another in order to determine the category into which each child fell and stayed for the rest of their lives.

Our understanding of academic rigor has increased greatly since those days. With brain research and studies into the psychology of adolescent learning we now understand that academic rigor is not a matter of quantity but rather a labor of quality. To put this in concrete terms, academic rigor is not memorizing the countries of the British Empire and listing these back on a test but rather it is engaging in higher order thinking by exploring what Wiggins and McTighe refer to as ‘essential questions’ like: “How would the world be different without colonization?”  It is no longer rigorous enough for our students to simply study a model of DNA; we want our students to stretch themselves by answering essential questions such as: “To what extent is DNA destiny?” Rather than simply studying the events and reasons for political coups and revolutions, we want our students to ask: “To what extent do we need checks and balances on governmental power?” In exploring the answers, students must still have background knowledge and information but it’s the incredible thinking that they do with this knowledge and information that makes this work academically rigorous. Academic rigor then is an exercise in stretching minds and teaching students the tools they will need to engage in and communicate their rigorous thinking to others. These tools are well defined in our School-Wide Learning Results (SLRs). Our curriculum is centered on essential questions and well-planned learning activities that teach our SLRs and help students stretch their minds while searching for the answers to these questions.

Academic rigor has a new face that admittedly may not be initially evident to a visitor to middle school but don’t let the cheerful atmosphere fool you.  Kids are engaged in rigorous learning on a daily basis. Our external data such as ITBS and ISA indicate that what we are doing is producing very good to excellent results. The rigorous work that middle schoolers are doing now (and have done in the past) helps to create the cognitive foundation that has led ISKL students to achieve remarkable IB/AP results, university acceptances and successful careers. They build this foundation, however, through academic rigor within a nurturing and convivial environment. In short, their faces are happy and their brains are tired and we wouldn’t want it any other way!